A Night in the Morgue
by Madigirl
Summary: This is a crossover with the series er, written as part of a crossover contest. Mark Greene contemplates his own very real mortality as he talks with a corpse that will not stay dead.


"You down here again?" The man behind the desk took a bite of his sandwich and washed it down with a drink of his Coke. "Don't they have a break room up in the ER?"

Mark Greene sat down in the hospital issue metal and leather-looking plastic chair, took off his glasses, and rubbed his temples. "I like the quiet you have down here." He looked at the only living occupant of the stainless steel world of the morgue. "You don't mind, do you, Dave?"

"Nah" Dave downed the remainder of his Coke. "Gives me an opportunity to talk to someone who talks back." He held out the second half of his sandwich to the ER attending. When Mark waved it away, Dave shrugged, put it back in the bag, wadded up the whole mess, and tossed it, basketball style, into the trash. "Ha! Two points. Actually, it's been kind of busy down here." He nodded toward the inner room where three bodies lay on shining tables, waiting to be examined. "That pile up on the Eisenhower brought in a few DOA's." He sighed, leaned back in his chair, stretched and yawned. "Soon as lunch's over, I got to get to work."

Mark replaced his glasses and looked through the doors at the waiting "patients". "Yep. We saw them upstairs, too. We sent quite a few straight down here. Nothing we could do." He nodded slightly. "It must have been something. I heard there were 10 cars involved."

"Yeah. Crazy winter drivers, never learn to take their time." Dave stood and walked over to the door. "See that guy?" He indicated the man on the table closest to the door. "He was in one of the middle cars. Poor bastard didn't stand a chance. Driver's license says he's from the coast... Seacouver."

Mark stared through the window into the inner room. "Well, at least it was fast."

"Yeah, guess so. Hey, you wouldn't mind watching the place for a few, would you?" Dave was heading out the door before Marc had a chance to disagree. "Thanks, buddy. I'll be right back."

Mark stood staring at the place Dave used to be, then shrugged. "Sure, Dave. No inconvenience at all. I'll just sit here and contemplate my future." He moved behind the desk, reached into the little fridge that sat back there and pulled out a Coke, opened the magazine that was laying on the desk, and flipped through the pages without really seeing them.

Sighing, he closed the magazine, walked to the door of the inner room, and peered through the window. In a window of his mind, one he really wished he could close and draw the curtains on, he could see himself, laying on that cold metal table. He could see Romano declaring him dead with a less than sincere sadness, and then turning to comfort the distraught Elizabeth. He could see Elizabeth hold the baby over his body, saying "Say good-bye to Daddy, darling."

Closing his eyes against this scene, Mark told himself, once again, that these thoughts were morbid, and that he should push them aside. The doctor in him knew that the depression and morbidity were part of the process, and that it was probably exascerbated by the tumor. He also knew that as the tumor grew, this could get worse, and the thoughts could, in fact, begin to be visualized. The doctor warned him this might not happen, in fact, rarely did, but the man in him was scared to death of losing everything he was, that he would experience death, before he was dead.

His thoughts were brought back to the here and now, when he thought he saw something move on the other side of the door. Opening the door, Mark stepped inside. The particular smells of the morgue, masked slightly by the odor of disinfectant hit him, and he started to turn back, but then, just out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw something on the first table move.

"Too many late night movies." He snorted quietly, laughing at his own timidity, but he moved, slowly, to the table and looked at the man laying there. There was something weird about this guy. He didn't look nearly banged up enough to have died in a car crash. He had worked on far worse victims up in the er, and knew that they would survive. He lifted the man's head to look for a trauma to the skull or maybe a spinal injury, that might have caused this death without any apparent injury. He was surprised to find that while the man's hair was matted with dried blood, there seemed to be no actual trauma. He started to let the head down gently, when the man's eyes flew open, his body jerked, and he pulled in air with a loud gasp.

"Holy Shit!" Mark dropped the head and flew backwards so hard that he hit the wall. When the man rose slowly to a sitting position, Mark's leg's gelled and he sank, almost gracefully, to the floor.

The man on the table slowly swung his legs around so that he was sitting on the edge of the table. While he looked around the room, obviously trying to get his bearings, he rubbed the back of his head, as if it pained him. Mark's eyes grew large as the man turned toward him, maybe noticing him for the first time. "I'm sure this must seem very odd." The man's deep voice had the calm sound of a man trying to reason with an hysteric.

Odd? Did he say odd? Mark started nodding reflexively, as if in answer to a question that hadn't been asked. Did the corpse actually say odd? "You were dead." Even as he said it, he could almost hear Doug laugh as he told him what a splendid grasp of the obvious he had. "I know you were dead. I'm a doctor. I know dead."

"Look." The man started to get up from the table, but fell to the floor. Instinct over came panic and Mark rushed to help him up. "I know how this looks, and I'm sure you are frightened, but, really there is a rational explanation for this."

"Rational?" Mark stood back and looked at the man on the table. He was covered in blood, but seemed perfectly whole. "You want to tell me what's rational about me standing here, in a morgue, talking to a dead man?"

The man rubbed the back of his head again. "Obviously... What's your name?"

"Mark, Mark Greene." For a second, Mark wondered his he should offer his hand.

"Duncan MacLeod. Obviously, Mark, I'm not dead."

Mark shook his head, almost as emphatically as he had nodded before. "No, you were dead. You came into the er, one of the doctors checked you and declared you DOA, and you were sent down here. You were dead."

The man that had been MacLeod stood again, and this time remained firm. "Are you sure?" His question was kindly asked, but pierced through Mark like an electrified knife.

"No." Mark answered, quietly. A new wave of panic hit with tidal force as Mark looked from MacLeod to the other corpses, and back. "Oh, God." His voice was barely above a whisper. "It's happened."

MacLeod looked up from inspecting his clothes, and looked at Mark with genuine concern. "What has happened?"

"The tumor has finally caused me to go insane." Mark felt amazingly calm, given the facts that less than a minute ago he had been completely panicked and now he was talking either to a figment of his imagination or a reanimated dead man. "You aren't here at all, are you. Maybe you never were." He pulled up a stainless steel stool and sat. "I suppose its even possible this whole day hasn't happened."

MacLeod moved close to Mark and knelt beside him. "Are you going to be okay?"

Mark sat and contemplated. Finally he turned to face the bloody man. "No. You know, I don't mind dying so much." He frowned, and shrugged. "Well, okay, I do, but I thought I'd at least have time to say good-bye to my wife and kids." Mark removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, as tears began to well in his eyes. "I don't want their last memories of me to be of a crazy man who talks to ghosts."

MacLeod watched as the man quietly wept, morning the loss of all that he loved. He nodded as he made a decision. "That's not what they'll see." He stood to his full height and looked down at the doctor, who squinted and put his glasses back on. "I was dead, and I came back, and its not the first time. I am Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod and I was born in the highlands of Scotland in 1592. I am of a race of people who cannot die."

"What?" Mark stared up at the tall man, and wondered if figments of the imagination of the insane could also be insane.

MacLeod sighed. "I know this is hard to accept, but I'm immortal." He frowned. "You don't believe me, do you."

"Would you?" The words were out before Mark could question the intelligence of doubting a crazy man, or a dead one, for that matter, to his face.

"No." MacLeod smiled, then, and held out his arms. "And yet, here I am. Do you honestly believe that any of your er doctors would make such a horrible mistake?" He look compassionately at the doctor. "And I know you do not want to believe that I am less than real."

Mark looked at the man standing before him uninjured, but bloodied, standing strong and healthy. The doctor in him knew this couldn't be true, but the man in him believed him whole heartedly. "You live forever?"

Macleod shrugged. "Essentially."

Mark frowned as he tried to understand this new information. "What about your children? Are they... immortal, too?"

A look that Mark couldn't read flashed suddenly across the tall man's face. "We can't have children."

Mark sat quietly as he imagined what his life would be if he had never had his girls. In sudden realization, he knew that they were his life, his own immortality. He stood and looked back out into the office. "Well, I guess you don't really belong in the morgue, do you?"

"No, Mark." Duncan smiled, and opened the door. "Not this time."

"What am I supposed to tell Dave?"

"Dave?" Duncan wrapped his long coat around him and pulled the collar up high, hoping to hide the worst of the gore.

"The guy in charge here." Mark looked around, wondering if there was a form to fill out to report a missing corpse.

"Oh." Duncan smiled. "I thought that was you." He clamped his hand on Mark's shoulder, and looked into his eyes. Mark was surprised by the sadness he saw there, and even more by the spark of amusement. "I'm sure you'll think of something." With that, Duncan MacLeod turned and left the morgue.

Mark sat behind the desk, took a drink from the soda still sitting there, and waited for Dave. He ran possible explanations as he flipped through the magazine. He stopped when he came to a travel ad for Hawaii. He smiled as he realized that he knew exactly what he wanted to do with the rest of his life.


End file.
